Long seen as one of the most insular of nations, Japan is surprising its neighbors (and perhaps itself) by opening its doors a bit wider to foreign workers.
KASHIWA, Japan — When it comes to immigration to Japan, Koichiro Goto is blunt. He’s against it.
“To accept a lot of immigrants would break down the borders of our singular nation,” said Mr. Goto, director of a nursing home company in Kashiwa, a suburb of Tokyo.
Yet Mr. Goto, who also serves on the local city council, supported a bill that passed Japan’s Parliament early Saturday, allowing for a sharp increase in the number of foreign workers who will be admitted to Japan starting next year.
As immigration roils the politics of the West, and the United States and Europe seek to lock down their borders, Japan — long considered one of the most insular of nations — is moving in the other direction, surprising its neighbors and perhaps itself, by opening its doors just a bit wider to immigrants.
Mr. Goto’s reasoning for endorsing the measure is purely economic: He is desperate to hire caregivers at Mother’s Garden, a 70-room nursing home where there is a waiting list of 60 would-be residents and want ads almost never attract job applicants.
“If we aren’t helped by foreign workers,” Mr. Goto said, “this business would not survive.”
Under the bill that passed Parliament’s upper house on Saturday, Japan will offer five-year work visas to unskilled guest workers for the first time. Between 260,000 and 345,000 will be made available, for workers in 14 sectors suffering from severe labor shortages, including caregiving, construction, agriculture and shipbuilding.
The bill also creates a separate visa category for high-skilled workers, who will be allowed to stay for unlimited periods and enjoy greater benefits, including permission to bring their families to Japan.
The new law appears to mark a significant turnaround for the right-leaning administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. As recently as three years ago, Mr. Abe said on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly that “ there are many things that we should do before accepting immigrants.”
To cope with labor shortages resulting from a declining population, he advocated for more women in the workplace, delaying retirement and using robots to do jobs once filled by humans .
But Japan’s shrinking work force and rapidly aging population put pressure on Mr. Abe and his conservative supporters to accept that the nation’s demographic challenges could not be solved by internal measures alone.
In the absence of immigration, Japan’s population is projected to shrink by about 16 million people — or nearly 13 percent — over the next 25 years, while the proportion of those over the age of 65 is expected to rise from a quarter of the population to more than a third. In caregiving alone, the government estimates that employers will need an additional 377,000 workers by 2025.
The shortage of workers is “an urgent matter,” Mr. Abe said during a parliamentary session late last month. The country, he said, needs “foreign workers as soon as possible.
